Turchin McGurchin was tidying up Mabel’s original Scarlet Creative Sylvia House when Ruby silently entered. “Don’t let me scare you old man,” she said to him from behind.” Turchin laid his broom aside and they hugged. 2 weeks was long enough to make a good friend.

—–

“It’s so beautiful here,” Ruby spoke while staring out across the expanse of the Rubi Woods from her higher perspective on the tire swing.

Turchin nodded from his chair while trying to fight nodding off at the same time. “Yup. Sure ’nuff is.”

Ruby just sat for a while, taking in the calmness and serenity. “Shame Mabel can’t live here… in this one.” She glances toward the SCS house just to her left now.

“Mabel will be back soon enough,” Turchin offered in his countrified manner of speaking. Slow and easy. “Best she’s not here for a spell — till she fully gets over Buurb. Yup, I saw it coming, all along.”

Rubi looked down at Turchin, then, after a smaller pause: “Do you think they still love each other?”

“Hard to tell. Since Buurb’s a girl again…” He lets it go at that.

Ruby stares down at her crossed feet. “Of course.”

—–

Turchin caught Ruby up with town news since her two week stay about a month back, a visit no one currently around remembered except for him. Maxism was on the rise again, thanks to the crafty graffiti he painted last Tuesday in the vacant Stairs gallery — and has added onto in the meantime.

Keep directing your stares toward Max, was the overall message he wanted to plant. Turn it up to the Max, was a related catch phrase he was tinkering with. “You can see Max anywhere from town if you turn up your draw distance to the max — 512 meters,” he explained to the 15 year old. “Fate,” he tacked on. Ruby asked about the other two religions in town and what would happen to them. “They’ll implode,” Turch said in uncharacteristic sharpness. “It’s just suppose to be Ruby — you — and Max.” But he was wrong about that.

—–

In his reinstated apartment, smoking and observing Roger Pine Ridge waited for someone to reenter Collagesity from the woods.